


sickness and health

by kwritten



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, F/F, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Female-Centric, Femslash, POV Female Character, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 14:33:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3071675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>shortly after Renesmee turns ten (or whatever) she's suddenly contracts an unknown supernatural illness. as the family pulls together to solve the mystery, Rosalie and Leah are forced to work together. </p><p>along the way, kissing happens. because of course it does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sickness and health

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vergoldung](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vergoldung/gifts).



> Planning for about five chapters for this - not sure what the update schedule is going to be like so sorry about that in advance!

Leah is alone in the woods when Rosalie returns from Russia alone and empty-handed. 

She’s half-asleep under a tree with her clothes folded neatly beside her. She prefers sleeping this way, phasing even when she’s home down in La Push with a bed beneath her skin. She prefers her skin to be covered in thick fur when she’s asleep. 

Sometimes Seth folds his too-warm body around hers and scratches her behind the ear like she’s a family pet instead of a sister and says nothing about it at the kitchen table the next morning.

Which is reason number three hundred and twenty why she prefers to sleep in the woods. Alone. Or at least, within howling distance of Jacob in case something goes wrong. 

Near enough to the Cullens to know when someone is missing or leaves on a midnight hunt or fucking or hungry.

Anyway, it’s not like the danger ever passes around here. It’s easier to just stay close rather than get caught by surprise by the next supernatural catastrophe. 

Which is why she’s the first one to know that Rosalie is home.   
And empty handed.  
And alone.

She lifts her head for a moment and watches the vampire walk slowly through the woods – almost like a human – breathing heavily as if breathing matters. 

You’d like it if they caught each other’s eye and connected right at the beginning, wouldn’t you? That’s how stories like this usually begin – in the dark, in the woods, in the midst of heartbreak and a sudden clearing of understanding.

Leah watches for a minute and then lays her head back down to sleep.

If Rosalie is home and alone that either means really good news or really bad news, so Leah is going to sleep now while she can.

 

 

When Renesemee turned ten – or what basically constituted ten years of physically being alive whatever that meant to her – she gleefully dragged Jacob off to college and gave her parents strict instructions to go have a nice long honeymoon. And so everyone scattered a bit. Rosalie and Emmett planned to follow Renesemee after a couple of months just to check in and make sure they were getting along alright. She had chosen New Orleans, which was a clear sign to everyone that she wanted some time to herself. 

So Bella and Edward disappeared into the Amazon for a few months and Alice twirled off to Paris for some winter shopping shortly after, while Emmett and Rosalie decided to take another go at Everest. They all planned to meet up in New Orleans for Christmas. 

Of course, Rosalie and Emmett got sidetracked on their way back down the mountain by a lost couple and ended up trekking down at human speeds, so they were a few weeks later than they had originally planned.

And found Jacob climbing the walls with anxiety because Renesemee was sick. 

Half-vampire children apparently can get really fucking sick.  
They also can be annoying self-sacrificing martyrs like their parents.  
Which left Rosalie having to deal with a cranky supernatural teenager potentially dying and refusing any help at all four weeks before anyone else was planning on showing up for Christmas like they planned.

Rosalie had her on a plane back to Forks within an hour of arriving and sent Emmett off to round up Carlisle and Esme off Isle Esme. It took some not-so gentle ‘I’m putting my foot down missy’ lectures on Rosalie’s part and once or twice pulling the ‘I’m older than you’ card which she really didn’t like to do now that Renesemee was wearing the face of a twenty year old supermodel. It was just weird.

She also had a sudden appreciation for Esme’s ability to perform the role of ‘mom’ for so many years without visibly cringing. 

The Black pack has both houses lit up and ready for vampire occupancy by the time they arrive.

Rosalie does _not_ silently thank them for having their shit together.  
They’re dogs and as far as she’s aware, none of them seem to have jobs or hobbies so…

Renesemee is looking an awful lot like Bella did when she came home early from her first honeymoon on the island and so once she’s asleep Rosalie rounds on Jacob and asks the most uncomfortable conversation in vampire history.

_Did you, by chance, knock up my niece?_

He splutters something like a no and outside she can hear one of his dogs growling in protest. 

She leaves the pack in charge and mumbles something about being thirsty before throwing herself into the woods. Somewhere near the Atlantic ocean Rosalie finally stops running and lets herself cry. And then she creates a really interesting rock formation and takes down a few animals.

When she returns it’s nearly sunrise and Carlisle is standing on the front porch.

Emmett hugs her and makes her take a warm bath.

Their eyes follow her around the house, as if waiting for her to snap.   
As if she’s the one that they need to worry about.  
As if there isn’t a child in the next room dying.

 

Bella retains a relatively cool head and gets into planning mode within an hour. 

Rosalie volunteers to go to Russia to seek out the other tribe of half-vampires they’ve started hearing rumors about in the past few years. Carlisle books a flight to see the Volturi. Nahuel and two of his sisters are already in Renesemee’s room, they’ve never seen anything like this but are staying near just in case. 

 

 

They find werewolves in Russia. 

Not the nice, shape-shifting, telepathic kind from home. 

The kind with a relationship to the moon and a venom in their teeth that is poisonous to vampires.

Something Emmett finds out too late. 

She doesn’t find anyone like Nessa and Nahuel. 

She didn’t expect to.

She spends a couple of weeks in Moscow getting drunk and dancing in underground clubs and getting really, really close to tasting a human just for the hell of it.

Not like she has much to lose anyway.

 

 

She goes home to Forks because Forks is home now. And they’re all waiting for her. And bad news isn’t something you tell over the phone.

Even if Alice has probably already enlightened everyone to the situation at hand.  
Every gritty, messy, disgusting detail of it.

She’s not very good at keeping secrets.

 

 

Her flight from Moscow to Singapore to Los Angeles is all she can take, so she runs the rest of the way; doesn’t even bother to hotwire a car – or buy, not like she doesn’t have the cash – to get her home. Leaves her shoes somewhere on the Northern California coast because the hard ground actually feels soothing under her feet.

 

 

The first thing she encounters at home is Jacob’s second in command. She’s in wolf form about ten yards from the main house curled up under a tree. She barely glances up when Rosalie passes, walking slowly.

For the first time in her life, Rosalie is jealous of one of them. Bad smell and all. At least they have something to escape into.

Renesemee showed her once, how it felt to be a wolf, she managed to extract it from Jacob’s mind somehow. (They’re still working on what her abilities actually are.) She was braiding Rosalie’s hair into some ridiculously elaborate style she found on youtube and humming to herself. Probably didn’t even mean to pass the information on; the fresh smells of the forest, the thrill of running so close to the ground, feeling every pound of every foot upon the ground, the simplicity of being a wolf instead of a human if only for a moment. It was gone before it began, Nessa pulling back and smiling at her work.

Alice surely knew she was coming before she got there.  
Edward surely heard her thoughts long before she could even smell home.

They let her come in on her own.

And she is – for just one moment – fucking jealous of that goddamn wolf asleep in the woods without a care in the world.

Edward’s face is full of that thought when she opens the door and steps into the living room. It’s reflected there in the pity he shoots her way.

And then she wishes, not for the first time, that her darling brother would keep his nosy pretentious ass out of her fucking head.

And smiles bitterly at him when the pity in his eyes suddenly becomes tinged with guilt.

 

 

And that was just the prologue, darling reader.


End file.
